1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a food information management system for managing food information including cooking information. More specifically, the present invention relates to an food information management system for the automatic and intelligent cooking of processed foods using electric cooking utensils including microwave cookers and electric ovens or for the selective use of general foods.
The term “intelligent cooking” signifies the confirmation of various pieces of information about processed foods, such as nutritive ingredients, energy-producing value, weight, cooling method and cooling time, and the provision of managing means.
2. Description of the Related Art
The requirement of the food market for high-degree information about foods and processed foods has advanced progressively in recent years and the capacity of an information indicating part of a package has become insufficient for indicating a large amount of such high-degree information. Such a problem is due to the following condition of social background.
(1) The quality and grade of processed foods have been progressively enhanced with the expansion of the processed food market and it is desired that the types and qualities of processed foods can be clearly understood.
(2) An advanced in medical technology relating to adult diseases requires a diet and dietary cures, and information necessary for a diet and dietary cures.
(3) Aging society with an increasing number of aged people requires easily readable indication.
(4) It is impossible to indicate precautious information in a limited space on packages of foods.
Information necessary for the automation of cooking and nourishment management has not been unified and effective interfaces for information exchange have not been available.
The followings are concrete problems residing in information indication on conventional packages.
(1) When a person cooks a processed food, such as a frozen food or a chilled dish, by an electric cooking device, the person needs to read visually instructions specifying a heating method and heating time indicated on the package of the processed food and to set the electric cooking device for cooking. However, since only a small area is available on the package for indicating the instructions, the instructions are indicated in small letters in a small area, which is difficult for a person with poor eyesight to read such small letters. Moreover, a blind person is unable to read the instructions and needs some help. When setting an electric cooking device for cooking, it is troublesome to determine a heating time selectively according to the output capacity of the electric cooking device, it is possible that the electric cooking device is set for a wrong heating time in some cases to heat the processed food excessively or insufficiently, and it is possible that a wrong heating mode is selected, for example, a range-heating mode is selected when an oven-heating mode must be selected and vice versa.
(2) Dieticians manage diet meals in hospitals. Different patients need different ways of management individually and the qualities of different diet meals cannot be confirmed when distributing the diet meals to patients. The management of diet meals in general homes is a serious problem; people need to consult a nutritive composition table and need to manage diet meals by a complicated method.
Such problems arises when letters expressing many pieces of information are printed on the packages of foods because contradictory conditions, i.e., printing many pieces of information in a limited area on a package and printing many pieces of information in letters of a size large enough to facilitate reading the information. Such difficulties in indicating information on packages of foods will be enhanced and will become more serious with the progressive increase of kinds of information and the enhancement of the quality of information and some measures must be taken to deal with such problems.